This Week on The Disclaimer: Funding the Arts vs. Branding the City

Plus: a victory for responsible rap promoting

This week on The Disclaimer, a near-weekly half hour of debate and chit-chat between WMSE's Ryan Schleicher, A.V. Club Milwaukee's Matt Wild and I, we discuss Journal Sentinel art critic Mary Louise Schumacher's recent column about the ceremony surrounding a $350,000 ArtPlace grant to fund a creative bike path in the Harambee neighborhood, and Ald. Nik Kovac's response to her piece. The guys second Schumacher's assertion that more attention needs to be paid to promoting quality, meaningful art and less to "press conferences, pep rallies and pomp," while I make the case that all that pomp is important in its own way. We close the show with a discussion of Saturday's canceled Chief Keef performance at 618 Live on Water and how the furor over the show differed from Milwaukee media's previous attempts to sensationalize rap concerts.

You can stream the episode below or on iTunes. As always, we encourage you to let us know what you think. Feel free to weigh in on these topics (or suggest other ones) at our Facebook page.